Courtesy of Colorado State Athletics –
TEMPE, Ariz. – Back on the national stage, the goal was to be aggressive. From the start. For the duration.
Emily Kohan‘s team did just as instructed at Desert Financial Arena on the Arizona State campus. There was a roadblock at the start, but Colorado State’s volleyball team found an alternate route, but as well as the Rams played, sixth-seeded Texas A&M was just a bit better on the big points, ending Colorado State’s season with a 25-20, 16-25, 29-27, 25-23 decision in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
“We were aggressive. We went toe-to-toe with the 17th-(ranked) RPI team,” Kohan said. “We outhit them, we out-dug them, out-blocked them. The margins are really thin when you get to postseason. If one of those challenges goes differently or one of those points in set three goes differently, it’s a different mach.”
It was in the third set where the match flipped in favor of the Aggies. Colorado State (21-11) had four set points to work with it couldn’t close, whereas Texas A&M jumped at the opportunity the first chance they could.
Looking at a 2-1 deficit instead of a lead didn’t change the way the Rams played, but it did leave them with no margin for error.
“It’s big-girl volleyball. You have to be able to perform and also stop one of their hot hitters in those key moments, because you know they’re going to feed her every single chance they can get,” said Malaya Jones, CSU’s hot girl all year. “It’s just a matter of some fine tuning at the end, playing really aggressive and also being able to stop a really aggressive hitter. It was a little frustrating, but things happen, and you move on to the next set.”
Logan Lednicky was that person for the pin-reliant Aggies, putting down two of her team-best 23 in the crucial stretch. Texas A&M ended with a trio in double digits as Emily Hellmuth had 12, Taylor Humphrey 11 – all pin players.
Lednicky had four out of the gates in the first set as the Rams were struggling to get going as Texas A&M put up a solid block in the first set, producing four and sending the Rams’ attack searching for answers after hitting .065 in the opening stanza. They found them in the crossover, getting an assist from the person who normally produces them – setter Emery Herman.
By the end of the second set, Herman had seven kills, matching Jones in the early going.
“It was huge. They had to stay with her because she was so active and she was getting kill for kill,” Jones said. “It was insane. I was freaking out. Like Emery, you’re an attacker. It was really important because when they would stay with her my backrow attack left me with more space to find the court and get into my groove. At least for that I thought it was pretty helpful.”
Herman would do her traditional work, closing with a double-double of 45 assists and 10 digs, adding just one more kill. It didn’t help just Jones, as Naeemah Weathers started to find space, closing with 11 kills while hitting a crisp .500 from the middle.
Additionally, the Rams were serving tough, getting eight from five different players. Up or down in a set or the match, the team kept attacking.
“We went out with the intention of playing so free and so hard, and I think all of us — everyone on the court and those who make up our bench absolutely did that,” said Weathers, who leaves as the program’s career leader in hitting percentage, the first Ram to close a career north of .400. “You could hear our bench screaming for us when we did something good and even if we didn’t. I think all of us, every time we came into the huddle, we would say, ‘OK, one up, one down, we’ve got this next one, give it your all, this might be the point.’ It definitely affected how we went out and the intent with how we wanted to play volleyball.”
And Jones played big-girl volleyball. The early frustrations became a distant memory as she put forth what has become a normal outing. She led all with 26 kills in the match, extending her program single-season record for kills to 567. It was the 14th match this season she put down 20 or more kills.
She also pushed her career total to 1,297, which ranks third in the modern scoring era.
“I think it was more my approach that I had to come and fix. It wasn’t exactly the block, it was more I just needed to get farther back and adjust my mechanics,” Jones said. “Once I did that, it kind of took off and really started working. When you play against big blocks you have to adjust and be able to adjust very quickly. It was one of those moments.”
As it turns out, the final moment for an important set of Rams, including four fifth-year players. Weathers is one. So is Herman. Add Karina Leber and Kennedy Stanford, who ranks second in the modern era in career kills.
As an emotional Kohan noted, the numbers they all put up were incredible. They just happened to pale in comparison to the people.
“I’m incredibly proud of the way we played volleyball. We played high-level volleyball tonight,” Kohan said. “Five seniors, the fourth fifth-years who decided to come back for their covid year, and this was the moment they wanted to come back for, to play in the postseason, and man, they went toe-to-toe with a great team in Texas A&M.”
